THE WILL TO LIVE
Waymark made his way to Paddington at the usual time on the following
evening, and found Maud alone. There was agitation in her manner as she
welcomed him, and she resumed her seat as if the attitude of rest was
needful to her. In reply to his inquiries about her health, she assured
him she was well, and that she felt no painful results from the
previous evening. Waymark also showed an unusual embarrassment. He
stood for some moments by the table, turning over the leaves of a book.
"I didn't know you had Rossetti," he said, without looking up. "You
never mentioned him."
"I seem to have had no opportunity."
"No. I too have many things that I have wanted to speak to you about,
but opportunity was wanting. I have sometimes been on the point of
asking you to let me write to you again."
He glanced inquiringly at her. Her eyes fell, and she tried to speak,
but failed. Waymark went to a seat at a little distance from her.
"You do not look as well as when I met you in the summer," he said. "I
have feared you might be studying too hard. I hope you threw away your
books whilst you were at the sea-side."
"I did, but it was because I found little pleasure in them. It was not
rest that took the place of reading."
"Are your difficulties of a kind you could speak of to me?" he asked,
with some hesitation.
She kept her eyes lowered, and her fingers writhed nervously on the arm
of the chair.
"My only fear would be lest you should think my troubles unreal. Indeed
it is so hard to make them appear anything more than morbid fancies.
They are traceable, no doubt, to my earliest years. To explain them
fully, I should have to tell you circumstances of my life which could
have little interest for you."
"Tell me--do," Waymark replied earnestly.
"Will you let me?" she said, with a timid pleasure in her voice. "I
believe you could understand me. I have a feeling that you must have
experienced something of these troubles yourself, and have overcome
them. Perhaps you could help me to understand myself."
"If I thought I could, it would give me great happiness."
She was silent a little, then, with diffidence which lessened as she
went on, she related the history, as far as she knew it, of her
childhood, and described the growth of her mind up to the time when she
had left home to begin life as a governess. It was all very simply, but
very vividly, told; that natural command of impressive language which
had so struck Waymark in her letters displayed itself as soon as she
had gained confidence. Glimpses of her experience Waymark had already
had, but now for the first time he understood the full significance of
her early years. Whilst she spoke, he did not move his eyes from her
face. He was putting himself in her position, and imagining himself to
be telling his own story in the same way. His relation, he knew, would
have been a piece of more or less clever acting, howsoever true; he
would have been considering, all the time, the effect of what he said,
and, indeed, could not, on this account, have allowed himself to be
quite truthful. How far was this the case with Maud Enderby? Could he
have surprised the faintest touch of insincerity in look or accent, it
would have made a world's difference in his position towards _her_. His
instinct was unfailing in the detection of the note of affected
feeling; so much the stronger the impression produced upon him by a
soul unveiling itself in the _naivete_ of genuine emotion. That all was
sincere he could have no doubt. Gradually he lost his critical
attitude, and at moments surprised himself under the influence of a
sympathetic instinct. Then he would lose consciousness of her words for
an interval, during which he pondered her face, and was wrought upon by
its strange beauty. The pure and touching spirituality of Maud's
countenance had never been so present to him as now; she was pale with
very earnestness, her eyes seemed larger than their wont, there was
more than womanly sweetness in the voice which so unconsciously
modulated itself to the perfect expression of all she uttered. Towards
the end, he could but yield himself completely to the spell, and, when
she ceased, he, like Adam at the end of the angel's speech, did not at
once perceive that her voice was silent.
"It was long," she said, after telling the outward circumstances of her
life with her aunt, "before I came to understand how differently I had
been brought up from other children. Partly I began to see it at the
school where we first met; but it only grew quite clear to me when I
shared in the home life of my pupils in the country. I found I had an
entirely different view of the world from what was usual. That which
was my evil, I discovered to be often others' good; and my good, their
abhorrence. My aunt's system was held to be utterly unchristian. Little
things which I sometimes said, in perfect innocence, excited grave
disapproval. All this frightened me, and made me even more reserved
than I should have been naturally.
"In my letters to you I began to venture for the first time to speak of
things which were making my life restless. I did little more than hint
my opinions; I wonder, in looking back, that I had the courage to do
even that. But I already knew that your mind was broader and richer
than mine, and I suppose I caught with a certain desperation at the
chance of being understood. It was the first opportunity I had ever had
of discussing intellectual things. With my aunt I had never ventured to
discuss anything; I reverenced her too much for that; she spoke, and I
received all she said. I thought that from you I should obtain
confirmation where I needed it, but your influence was of the opposite
kind. Your letters so abounded with suggestion that was quite new to
me, referred so familiarly to beliefs and interests of which I was
quite ignorant, showed such a boldness in judging all things, that I
drifted further and further from certainty. The result of it all was
that I fell ill.
"You see now what it is that has burdened me from the day when I first
began to ask myself about my beliefs. I was taught to believe that the
world was sin, and that the soul only freed itself from sin in
proportion as it learned to live apart from and independently of the
world. Everything was dark because of sin; only in the still, secret
places of the soul was the light of purity and salvation.
"I thought I had passed out of this. When I returned to London, and
began this new life, the burden seemed all at once lifted from me. I
could look here and there with freedom; the sky was bright above me;
human existence was cheerful and noble and justified in itself. I began
to learn a thousand things. Above all, my mind fixed on Art; in that I
thought I had found a support that would never fail me.
"Oh, why could it not last? The clouds began to darken over me again. I
heard voices once which I had hoped were for ever silenced. That sense
of sin and horror came upon me last night in the streets. I suffered
dreadfully."
She was silent, and, meeting Waymark's eyes so fixed on her own, became
conscious of the eagerness and fervour with which she had spoken.
"Have you any experience of such things?" she asked nervously. "Did you
ever suffer in the same way?"
"It is all very strange," he said, without answering her question.
"This overpowering consciousness of sin is an anachronism in our time.
But, from the way in which you express yourself, I should have thought
you had been studying Schopenhauer. I suppose you know nothing of him?"
"Nothing."
"Some of your phrases were precisely his. Your doctrine is simply
Pessimism, with an element of dogmatic faith added. With Schopenhauer,
the will to live is the root of sin; mortify this, deny the first
instincts of your being, and you approach righteousness. Buddhism has
the same system. And, in deducing all this from the plain teachings of
Christianity, I am disposed to think you are right and consistent.
Christianity _is_ pessimism, so far as this world is concerned; we see
that in such things as the thanksgiving for a' person's death in the
burial service, and the prayer that the end of the world may soon come."
He paused, and thought for a moment.
"But all this," he resumed, rising from his seat, and going to stand
with one arm upon the mantelpiece, "is of course, with me, mere matter
of speculation. There are two allegories, which define Pessimism and
Optimism. First that of Adam and Christ. Adam falls through eating of
the tree of knowledge; in other words, sin only comes with
self-consciousness, sin _is_ the conscious enjoyment of life. And,
according to this creed, it can only be overcome by abnegation, by the
denial of the will to live. Accordingly, Christ enters the world, and,
representing Humanity, as Adam had done, saves the world by denial, of
Himself, even to death. The other allegory is that of Prometheus. He
also represents mankind, and his stealing of the fire means man's
acquirement of a conscious soul, whereby he makes himself capable of
sin. The gods put him in bondage and torment, representing the
subjection to the flesh. But Prometheus is saved in a different way
from Adam; not by renunciation, but by the prowess of Hercules, that is
to say, the triumphant aspiration of Humanity. Man triumphs by
asserting his right to do so. Self-consciousness he claims as a good
thing, and embraces the world as his birthright. Here, you see, there
is no room for the crushing sense of sin. Sin, if anything, is
weakness. Let us rejoice in our strength, whilst we have it. The end of
course will come, but it is a wise man's part not to heed the
inevitable. Let us live whilst it is called to-day; we shall go to
sleep with all the better conscience for having used the hours of
daylight."
Maud listened with head bent.
"My own temperament," Waymark went on, "is, I suppose, exceptional, at
all events among men who have an inner life. I never knew what goes by
the name of religious feeling; impulses of devotion, in the common
sense of the phrase, have always been strange to me. I have known fear
at the prospect of death; religious consolation, never. Sin, above all,
has been a word without significance to me. As a boy, it was so; it is
so still, now that I am self-conscious. I have never been a deep
student of philosophy, but the doctrine of philosophical necessity, the
idea of Fate, is with me an instinct. I know that I could not have
acted otherwise than I did in any juncture of my life; I know that the
future is beyond my control. I shall do this, and avoid that, simply
owing to a preponderance of motives, which I can gauge, but not
control. Certain things I hate and shrink from; but I try to avoid,
even in thought, such words as vice and crime; the murderer could not
help himself, and the saint has no merit in his sanctity. Does all this
seem horrible to you?"
Maud raised her eyes, and looked steadily at him, but did not speak. It
was the gaze of one who tries humbly to understand, and longs to
sympathise. But there was a shadow of something like fear upon her face.
Waymark spoke with more earnestness.
"You will not think me incapable of what we call noble thought and
feeling? I have in me the elements of an enthusiast; they might have
led me to strange developments, but for that cold, critical spirit
which makes me so intensely self-conscious. This restless scepticism
has often been to me a torment in something the same way as that burden
of which you speak. Often, often, I would so gladly surrender myself to
my instincts of passion and delight. I may change; I may perhaps some
day attain rest in an absolute ideal. If I do, it will be through the
help of one who shall become to me that ideal personified, who shall
embody all the purer elements of my nature, and speak to me as with the
voice of my own soul."
She hung upon his words, and an involuntary sigh, born of the intensity
of the moment, trembled on her lips.
"I have spoken to you," he said, after what seemed a long silence,
"with a sincerity which was the due return for your own. I could have
shown myself in a more pleasing light. You see how little able I am to
help you; the centre-thought of your being is wholly strange to me. And
for all that--may I speak my thought?--we are nearer to each other than
before."
"Yes, nearer," she repeated, under her breath.
"You think that? You feel that? I have not repelled you?"
"You have not"
"And if I stood before you, now, as you know me--egotistic, sceptical,
calm--and told you that you are the only being in whom I have ever felt
complete confidence, whose word and thought I felt to be one; that you
exercise more power over me than any other ever did or shall; that life
in your companionship might gain the unity I long for; that in your
presence I feel myself face to face with a higher and nobler nature
than my own, one capable of sustaining me in effort and leading me to
great results--"
He became silent, for her face had turned deadly pale. But this passed,
and in her eyes, as they met his, trouble grew to a calm joy. Without
speaking, she held her hand to him.
"You are not afraid," Waymark said, "to link your fate with mine? My
life is made up of uncertainties. I have no position; it may be a long
time before I can see even the promise of success in my work. I have
chosen that work, however, and by it I stand or fall. Have you
sufficient faith in me to wait with confidence?"
"I have absolute faith in you. I ask no greater happiness than to have
a share in your aims. It will give me the strength I need, and make my
life full of hope."
It had come then, and just as he had foreseen it would. It was no
result of deliberate decision, he had given up the effort to discover
his true path, knowing sufficiently that neither reason nor true
preponderance of inclination was likely to turn the balance. The
gathering emotion of the hour had united with opportunity to decide his
future. The decision was a relief; as he walked homewards, he was
lighthearted.
On the way, he thought over everything once more, reviewing former
doubts from his present position. On the whole, he felt that fate had
worked for his happiness.
And yet there was discontent. He had never known, felt that perhaps he
might never know, that sustained energy of imaginative and sensual
longing which ideal passion demands. The respectable make-believe which
takes the form of domestic sentiment, that everyday love, which, become
the servant of habit, suffices to cement the ordinary household, is not
the state in which such men as Waymark seek or find repose; the very
possibility of falling into it unawares is a dread to them. If he could
but feel at all times as he had felt at moments in Maud's presence. It
might be that the growth of intimacy, of mutual knowledge, would make
his love for her a more real motive in his life. He would endeavour
that it should be so. Yet there remained that fatal conviction of the
unreality of every self-persuasion save in relation to the influences
of the moment. To love was easy, inevitable; to concentrate love
finally on one object might well prove, in his case, an impossibility.
Clear enough to him already was the likelihood of a strong revulsion of
feeling when Ida once more came back, and the old life--if it could
be--was resumed. Compassion would speak so loudly for her; her face,
pale and illuminated with sorrow, would throw a stronger spell than
ever upon his senses. Well, there was no help. Whatever would be, would
be. It availed nothing to foresee and scheme and resolve.
And, in the same hour, Maud was upon her knees, in the silence of her
own chamber, shedding tears which were at once both sweet and bitter,
in her heart a tumult of emotion, joy and thanksgiving at strife with
those dark powers which shadowed her existence. _She_ had no doubts of
the completeness and persistency of her love. But was not this love a
sin, and its very strength the testimony of her soul's loss?